WHO BURNED DOWN GOVERNMENT HOUSE?

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 729, 9 April 1853, Page 2

WHO BURNED DOWN GOVERNMENT HOUSE?

To the Editor of the New- Zealander. Sir,—Your correspondent “ Blaze” has proved himself a regular firebrand, and a man without bowels of pity. Here he is raking up a slander already a week old and almost as long forgotten—and at such a conjuncture too—when the great incendiary himself is within a few hours journey of us, absolutely coming to Auckland, with a knife and fork in his kit, to cut the grass in the streets, and a sack to carry off the seed. Cruel “ Blaze,” you should certainly have had an s to your title ; do you not comprehend the difference between a culumny uttered when the subject of it is 300 miles away or only SO I —l mean as regards the risk to the calumniator; And why do you, now that the “arch-traitor” is again close upon our necks, why do you persist in stirring up a filthy puddle, in* passing which mcix already stop their nostrils ? let it rest—after all tis only the Editor of the Cross — cum—Maori Messenger ! The Cross has already painted Sir George as black as crimes could make him, and tlie little charge of arson was nothing but the finishing touch, the coup degrace, the varnish of the complete—Governor. But, six-, I highly approve of the suggestion of your fiery friend that an insurance company, for the public property, should be at once set on foot. The matter admits not of a moment’s delay, the “man” is coming, and although he is heralded by the “ shams ” of cheap land, representative institutions, and self-government—-tirnco danaos , as we used to say at school, ct dona ferentes, —and I have very great fears, sir, that it may soon become your painful duty, as a public journalist, to record suclx occurrences as the, conflagration of the Waitemata, the <&m-ing-up (in heaps?) of the Waikato, the removal of the Lunatic Asylum, or the miraculous restoration to common sense and decency of your contemporary the Southern Cross and ci-devant “ New Zealand Guardian —l am, sir, &c., A. Lucifer. April 2, 1853.